


Bury Me Down

by waltzmatildah



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2011-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-25 14:39:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post <i>Ghost World</i>: When Bonnie and Grams complete the spell, not everyone is ready for the ghosts to disappear. Alaric uses the aftermath (and the unbreakable bond between Damon and Stefan) to his somewhat shocking advantage…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bury Me Down

Smoke don’t rise, fuel don’t burn, sun don’t shine no more.  
Late one night, sorrow come round, scratching at my door.  
But I cut my hands and break my back, draggin’ this bag of stones,  
‘til they bury me down, beneath the ground with the dust and rattlin’ bones…  
(Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson)

 

*

 

 _Lexi is part-way through a syllable when she disappears. Feet and inches of dusty concrete floor all that separates the two she leaves behind. No time left for trivialities like good-bye. Again. Anna spots her mother split seconds before the reverse is true. Stretches out into a desperate lope and figures she makes it over one third of the distance before she is nothing once more. The tomb vampires circling the car wreck that is Carol Lockwood, and Caroline thinks that the description works just as well as a metaphor, vanish before her garbled soliloquy about boyfriends has started to make one iota of sense. She shrugs, disappointed. Had been itching for a fight._

 _The fire coursing through Damon’s ruined insides is lessened by degrees as Mason Lockwood bodily removes the nearest of the wooden stakes. The palms of his hands have blistered, bubbled. And he raises them unsteadily, winces at the damage that refuses to heal. Rolls his eyes once as the werewolf ghost takes his sweet time with the second stake. Feels it shift an inch or several before stalling._

 _“Very funny…” The sound grinds its way between teeth that are closed, clenched tight. His reply is nothing but empty silence and air._

 

 

Alaric gives Damon until midnight before he tries to call. Allows voicemail to pick up seven times over the space of fifteen minutes before he lets himself think that maybe, just maybe, the evening’s events have not quite gone to plan. He leaves the entrance to the Lockwood cellar and drives out to the boarding house himself. Finds a blonde vampire he doesn’t think he’s met ( _Hello, I’m Rebekah, Klaus’ sister,_ he baulks, doesn’t even bother to hide it, _I’m surprised no-one has mentioned me…_ ) lounging languidly on the rug in front of the open fireplace. It’s a warm night but she’s got it blazing nonetheless.

She offers him a glass of something he knows full well belongs to Damon. Swirls the bottle invitingly and deigns to pout when he bluntly refuses.

“Where is everyone?” he barks. Foregoes pleasantries in order to get to the point and doesn’t remember to be intimidated by her until after the fact.

“You know, drinking alone is decidedly boring,” she counters with a rumbling purr. “I can’t even interest you in a _nip_?”

He deduces she knows nothing. Doesn’t even bother with closing the front door again as he sprints across the gravelled driveway to his car. Checks off the myriad places he still needs to try as his fingers thrum heavily against the steering wheel, ramp up the inexplicable pounding in his chest until the low buzzing of the radio is blurred out by the white noise of his own pumping blood.

The Grill is closed by the time he makes his way there. The lights are off and the door is locked and while he knows a deadbolt means nothing to a vampire, he’s also sure Damon’s not in there. And he’s fast running out of options.

The thumbs his fingers over the buttons on his cell phone and can’t quite decide who to call. Realises with a start that, in situations like this, it is Damon that would typically be the top of his list. He runs a hand through his hair roughly. Drags his fingertips down his face and sighs around the decision he makes to call Elena.

Her voicemail greets him the first time. A cheery _please leave a message…_ that harks back to a time when her best friends would no doubt call and leave rambling monologues about boys and class and movies and shoes, until the beep cut them off and they’d have to call back and start again. He stabs at the screen to end the call, counts in sevens until he gets to 84 and hits redial.

She answers this time, breathy and uncertain, and he hates that he’s called her at all. Hates that he can’t figure this one out on his own. Recalculates suddenly, thinks; Caroline, or even the somehow-related-to-Klaus creature posed on the Oriental rug at the boarding house.

Anyone but Elena. But it’s too late for second guessing…

 _“Ric? Is that you?”_

He nods quickly, sharply. Accompanies the motion with a “Yes,” he hopes doesn’t sound as frayed as he feels. Bread crumbs and spider webs and loose cotton threads that cloud the windshield as he struggles to keep the car on the road.

 _“What’s going on?”_ She sounds far away. All echoes and haunted space, and he realises in a beat that it’s past midnight and he has no idea where she is.

“Elena, where are you? Are you okay?” Underlines the sentiment with a desperate apology to Jenna for failing her before he’d really had a chance to start.

A mumbled _“I’m fine,”_ works its way down the phone-line. He thinks he believes it about as much as she does but offers her the benefit of the doubt nonetheless.

“Okay, good. That’s good.”

He bites back a harsh bark of laughter that rings more than just softly of hysteria at his words, at what they mean, because there is very little about this night he’d call _good_. Not even close.

“Is Damon with you?” He feels the words tumble from his lips before he can fully contemplate the panic he’s tried, failed, to hide. Syllables and vowels sitting loose on his lap. It’s an innocent question, though laced through tightly with a rippling undercurrent that trips ice through his veins.

 _“No, why?”_ There’s hesitation in her voice, a pitchy timbre that betrays her immediate spike of fear. He hates that _terror_ has become her default setting.

“No real reason, just-“ She doesn’t let him finish the lie and he’s almost grateful for the reprieve.

 _“Ric. What’s going on?”_ He hears noise in the background. The murmur of a second voice he might recognise if he could keep his thoughts headed in just a single direction. Lowers his gaze for a second to the phone illuminating the passenger seat beside him, like the backlit screen might hold all the answers and then some.

Elena’s wide grin smiles back at him. Her fingers cuffed behind her ears and pulling forward. Her hair pulled tightly into a ponytail atop the crown of her head.

The joyful image of a stranger, he thinks. A girl he no longer knows. A girl who no longer knows herself.

“Damon’s missing.”

 

 

 _Damon manages to slip his ruined fingertips into the neck of his t-shirt without screaming. Tugs the sweat soaked material up to his teeth and tears viciously as a cry builds in the back of his throat. The material gives with a sharp rip that splits his insides in two. He wraps the shreds around his hands; swathes them as completely as possible before daring to reach tentatively towards a stake of vervain drenched timber that has disappeared so completely into his abdomen._

 _Grits his teeth so hard he hears the enamel crack and crumble, even as the redundant beating of his heart drowns out all other sound._

 

 

Stefan can’t be sure how much time has passed. He examines his fingernails absently. Rolls his eyes and shuffles his feet and tries not to think too hard about the _emptiness_ that has started to swallow him whole.

Lexi’s unexpected return hadn’t rattled him as much as it probably should have.

He wishes he could say the same for the phone call Elena is currently enveloped in. He can hear both sides of the conversation, and while the panic indelibly inked across her face might have been entertaining to him yesterday, last week, _this morning_ … his defences are low. Blood lust and pain combining to strip him of his steadfast resolve. He shakes his head, lets the sound of the chains fill the space inside his skull. Echoing.

 _Damon…_

Despite Lexi’s aborted mind-games Stefan’s still certain that it had only been that morning he’d found his brother impaled and shackled and _furious_. He’d laughed at the notion then; the notion that Damon could think it was him.

 

 

 _His arms shake with the effort required to drag the second stake from his ruined insides. He opens his throat wide. Screams. Doesn’t care._

 _When his chin drops back to his chest he can see that the hole in his flesh created by the stake isn’t closing. Notes instead the sudden spill of black-red warmth that floods a path to the floor beneath his feet. Wonders, absently, whether leaving the damn thing where it was would have been the wiser choice._

 _But he always was an act first, think later kind of guy. That it would be his eventual downfall was inevitable really._

 

 

Alaric bursts into the cell and stops short. Eyes the unease that seems to split the air in two. Stefan is bleeding sluggishly, bound and chained and no doubt vervained. But conscious, he notes, lips curled into a sneer that is almost unreadable.

“Well, well. Good to see the rescue team is assembling. Don’t suppose it matters that my brother is probably already, you know, _dead by now_.”

He drags the last three words out slowly, as if to prove a point, and the force he uses, the tone, they interest Alaric. Distract him from Elena’s silent stoicism for a beat or several. He keeps his eyes on the vampire but sends his words in her direction.

“You told him?”

“No,” It is Stefan who answers, cold and dead. “You did. You practically shrieked the words like a banshee…” Lips twisted into a sharp snarl.

Alaric lets his gaze linger on Stefan for longer than is entirely necessary. Cocks his head a little to one side as though the change in angle will cancel out the absolute change in personality.

No. Not absolute.

There is something the same in there. Perhaps even made all that much clearer by the absence of anything else.

“Where were they going?”

Elena this time. Matter of fact, like maybe, if they go through what they know step by step, then the answers will be obvious.

“The Lockwood cellar…”

“Wait. You mean,” Stefan draws the words out, a dripping drawl. And Alaric can’t quite fathom whether his new speaking voice is a product of the vervain pumping through his system or the human blood he’s slowing detoxing from. Just knows that the effect is equilibrium shifting. “You know where he is, but, instead of like, _rescuing him_ you’re here… having a chat about how dramatic and scary your lives are?”

“Stef—“

He cuts Elena off, doesn’t need her to defend him to this caricature.

“I’ve been there, Stefan. I’m not a complete idiot.” He ignores the way Stefan rolls his eyes loosely and huffs out a laugh of disbelief. “But it’s like a maze down there and I had no idea what I was getting myself into--”

“Let me go.”

The words are barely more than a growl. Elena spins defiantly, barks back her own _No!_. Alaric lets the vehemence in Stefan’s request confirm what he’d already suspected. Turns to face the writhing vampire as he struggles uselessly against the bindings.

 _“Let me go.”_ Measured. Calculating.

Alaric ignores every strained syllable.

“Have you been down there before? Any clue about the rough layout of the place?”

Stefan shakes his head violently, lowers his chin to his chest before raising his head once more, flash fast. Fangs descended. “Let me go.”

“We both know that’s not going to happen. Just tell me what you know and I’ll go back there. My guess is that something happened, Mason Lockwood tri—“

“Wait. What? He’s down there with a werewo—“

“A ghost, Stefan. He’s down there with a ghost and Mas—“

“The ghosts are gone, Ric.” Elena. And he’d almost forgotten she was still in the room. Standing to the side, hidden in elongated shadows. “Bonnie, she… The ghosts are gone.”

He twists until he’s facing her, feels his brows crease together in confusion, “But then…”

“If he’s still down there, he’s down there alone.”

Stefan roars. Throws his head back with a crack Alaric is almost certain must have fractured a vertebrae or several. He doesn’t bother waiting to find out. Lurches unsteadily for the stairs and is three quarters of the way up them before he remembers. Turns.

“Are you coming?” He’s not sure what he wants her answer to be. Notes her hesitation before she inches back into the shadows, slides her gaze across to her barely there boyfriend before she answers.

“I’m staying.”

And Alaric isn’t sure what to make of that.

 

 

 _There’s a puddle of blood collecting, thick, viscous, beneath feet he can no longer feel. He sends a direction to his toes, orders them authoritatively to twitch just an inch. They don’t so much as flutter._

 _He groans. Eyes the cell phone he’d managed to let slip from his feeble grip as the screen lights up once more. Bleats out a tinny version of a Taylor Swift song he’d only downloaded because he knew how much it _pleased_ Elena every time it burst to life. Recalls the day he’d spent using Stefan’s phone to call himself repeatedly just so he could catalogue every nuance of her increasingly frustrated reaction…_

 **Good times** , he thinks wryly.

 

 

Stefan watches Alaric’s retreat with an ever increasing sense of rage. A blind fury that might taste something akin to fear if he bothered to analyse it closely. Which he won’t.

“Are you worried about him, Stefan?” Elena’s voice is a sudden boom of volume and reverberation that bounces across his opened nerve endings. If he could reach her now, he’d tear her still pounding heart right from where it’s nestled beneath her ribs.

Shove it back into her mouth, _just to shut her up._

He’s sees what she’s doing. All sly words and slanting innuendo.

He laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs.

Refuses to acknowledge the bite of hysteria that sings through his toxic veins.

“This won’t work, you know.” A statement of fact. “And, if by some miracle it does, Klaus will just come back and kill us all so… you lose some, you lose some, _Elena_.”

Shrugs as much as his bindings will allow.

He likes saying her name now. Adding extra emphasis for no real reason other than it tastes good on his tongue.

Tastes just like she does.

 _Delicious._ He grins. Hopes it looks as absurd as it feels.

 

 

 _Damon’s eyes blink to closed and give up all pretence of fight as he lets them stay that way. There is no-one here to goad him into staying awake and sleep, desiccation, death; it all feels like it could almost be heaven right now._

 

 

Alaric only has to venture twenty yards or so further into the cellar’s winding walkways, take a sharp left instead of a slow-sweeping right, before he finds what he’s spent the best part of several hours searching for. Is irrationally _furious_ with himself for not persevering the first time.

“Damon?”

Dread laced through every wavering letter.

He can’t see where all the stakes have entered. And he can’t see his friend’s face. And for all he knows, Damon’s heart has been scythed by an inch of solid timber.

He tries again nonetheless, “Damon.” Reaches out a tentative fist of fingers and gives his left bicep a squeeze. Almost vomits with relief when the skin beneath his touch flinches violently.

“Shhh, it’s okay.” He limbos his way awkwardly through the wooden lattice holding Damon in place. Feels his insides shift as his feet slide in mud that isn’t really _mud_. Brings his fingers up under Damon’s chin to lever his face at an angle more receptive to the desperate confirmation of life.

So to speak…

“Heeeeey, Ric…” Blood drips from his chin in long, ropey strands. And his eyes blink; slowly, _so slowly_.

“What the hell happened to you, beef skewer?” Alaric goes for light-hearted and is pleased when Damon’s lips quirk into a grin he almost recognises.

“My tour guide took the afternoon off,” he slurs, head ice-heavy in Alaric’s palm. “Apparently I didn’t get the memo in time…”

“Lucky for you then, I got lock-up duty tonight.”

“Yeah,” Damon agrees, bounces his chin twice, “I feel so damn lucky right now…”

His face twists on the last word as Alaric’s free hand wraps around one of the splintered stakes.

“Damon?” He doesn’t know what he’s asking for. Validation maybe. Some kind of sign that pulling these things out is their only option. Wishes in that moment that he’d been functioning enough to bring blood bags.

For Damon. And maybe some bourbon for himself.

“’m sorry,” comes the reply he’s not expecting.

“For what?”

“Breakin’ your neck.” A pause, then: “Again.”

Alaric stalls, considers his options.

“I’m not saying it’s fine, no matter how much of your insides are currently on the outside, but, I will promise you this.” He lifts Damon’s chin again, raises the angle by degrees until they’re eye to unblinking eye. “We will talk about it again when you’re no longer busy practising your spaghetti strainer routine, deal?”

Damon nods and Alaric notes his eyes roll back in his head, shockingly, grotesquely, before returning to front and centre once more. _Jesus._

“But, you gotta admit,” Alaric swallows as Damon’s lips move slowly around the words, reveal teeth soaked to stained with someone else’s borrowed blood. “It is a _great_ routine…”

 

 

 _Damon can feel his heartbeats tripping over and around themselves inside his chest. The copper stench of the blood that was this morning’s breakfast is like burning as it slowly leaks from the craters in his gut. He wants to ask Alaric where Stefan is, if he knows, if…_

 _If…_

 

 

Stefan’s gums itch. Literally. And his hunger is _bone deep_.

Elena smells like all his Christmases, come at once…

“Do you love Damon?” He only asks the question because he already knows the answer and the games that play across her face are getting to be _so much fun_.

“No,” she bites back, furious, and he grins at her obvious lie as she continues. “But you do…”

If it falters, the smile he has etched on his face, then she doesn’t register it. But she does stalk towards him, out of the shadows and right up into his face.

“And that’s the one thing Klaus will _never_ be able to take from you…”

 

 

 _The walls of the cellar keep whiting out. The corners smudging and the ground turning to lily pads that dip and float under Alaric’s feet as he struggles with the stakes that are keeping him upright. The notion that any of it is his own doing, his maintenance of vertical, is illusionary at best…_

 _The flare of seam-splitting agony that engulfs him when he finally crumbles floor-ward is like nothing he has ever felt before._

 

 

“Can you walk?”

“No chance,” Damon bites around a wave of agony. “Pretty sure my spinal cord’s in about seven different pieces…”

Alaric blinks back at him dumbly, “Is that bad?”

“Well, gee, I dunno, Ric. Want me to sever yours so you can do a quick compare and contrast?”

The string of words he spills is visibly draining. Alaric feels his panic ramp up another notch as Damon’s features flatten out for a beat before drawing back into an agonised grimace. And Alaric wishes he’d stop doing that. Passing out for a heartbeat.

The unnecessary breaths he’s choking around cease to exist when he’s unconscious and he feels a little too much like _dead_ in Alaric’s arms in those moments.

“Don’t suppose you thought to bring along a sippee cup and a bag of o-neg.” The words slur from lips that barely move. It’s not a question because they both know he’d have offered it by now if he had. Alaric scrubs blood-tacky fingertips across his forehead as he catalogues his options. His own insides are vervain-tainted and of no use to Damon right now. Taps out a message to Caroline instead and hits send before he draws in a breath that is meant to be solidifying.

“Fireman or bride?” he offers. Figures handing the decision making over to Damon might make him somehow less responsible for the pain he’s about to inflict.

Damon snorts weakly, eyes closed. Huffs out a mouthful of blood that spatters the shins of Alaric’s jeans. The toe-tips of his scuffed shoes.

“Just, do me a favour, yeah?” Barely an audible whisper. And Alaric thinks he’d promise him the world right now. Wraps his fingers into the loose curls at the nape of Damon’s neck as he waits for the request.

“Knock me out first?” His eyes blink once, stay open, defiant. Alaric’s own blood runs cold as Damon’s continues to pool beneath him. “It’ll only take one punch, just…”

Eyelids close.

“Please…”

Alaric complies. But he does it left-handed for a reason he can’t fully reconcile beyond _oh, fuck_.

They’re almost back to the surface when Damon stirs briefly, mutters his brother’s name thickly into Alaric’s collar bone as his chin dips to his chest.

 _“Stefan…”_

 

 

 _He can hear the laughter of a small child. Carelessly boisterous as it bounces off the low stone walls that encircle the garden. A head pops up then, all tousled blonde curls and dirt smudged cheeks Damon knows he will most certainly take the blame for._

 _“Catch me, brother! I bet you can’t. I bet I’m faster than you…”_

 

 

Stefan registers the sound of Alaric’s car returning long before the cell door slams open. The acrid stench of coppery blood and tissue is strong enough to have even Elena staggering backwards until her shoulder-blades meet the rough stone wall.

“What the hell?” He can feel his fangs descend of their own accord; desperate despite the fact the blood is well and truly spoiled. If Stefan knows anything, he knows that.

Alaric just stands there. Wordless and out of breath; an entwined tableau. And the lack of action ramps up the hysteria itching underneath Stefan’s fingernails.

“What? Why? Why aren’t you--”

Alaric moves then. Lays his brother in the dust and the discarded debris that coats the cell floor. Stands, black-red palms out. A surrender of sorts.

The sharp saltiness of Elena’s tears blend completely with the acrid tang of Damon’s blood. The heady aroma is almost his un-doing and he lifts his knees; slams his feet back towards the ground. The chair he’s tied to fractures; sends him sprawling to the floor beside his brother. Sucking in great mouthfuls of dank air he hasn’t needed for almost a century and a half, but still _craves_ nonetheless.

A tangible reminder of life.

Damon’s paper-thin lids flutter, butterfly soft, before his fingers reach out to skim the veins around Stefan's eyes. He gurgles something indecipherable that bubbles the blood caught between his teeth.

His growled reply morphs into a primal _untie me_ that builds from his boots.

 

 

 _He doesn’t hurt anymore. And the feathers at his back are impossibly soft. A sharp contrast to the biting cold that has settled, deep and dark in his broken bones. He’d promised his mother once, twice, more times than he can count, that he’d look out for his baby brother. Keep him safe. Keep him close._

 _He lets all the myriad ways in which he has broken that vow to collect in the emptied out spaces where his heart and lungs used to live…_

 

 

Caroline cracks open the cell door. Alaric catches the instant crinkling of her nose and forehead as she registers the stench of drying blood and decay that invades the small chamber.

“What’s going--”

“Did you bring it?”

She holds up the bag of blood. Singular. Just like he asked.

“There are more in the car,” she counters. Answers his next question before he can give it voice and he offers her up a perfunctory nod.

“Good. Now,” he slides his gaze towards where Elena is on her knees to his left. Frozen solid. He can’t remember the last sound she made. The last move she shuddered her way into. “Take Elena and leave.”

Her head cracks up at that, “No.”

Alaric keeps his eyes on her, even as he addresses Caroline, pointed, “Take Elena and leave.”

She snaps then. Scrambles to her feet and screams. But even at her most furious, she is no match for her best friend. He can hear her muted protests as they continue out in the street. Hysteria and rage and bone-numbing _fear_.

Alaric has the hand-delivered blood bag clenched between fingers that cramp with the effort. Allows himself a self-indulgent second or several to contemplate what must come next as he backs away from the brothers.

Settling the blood on the floor, _out of reach_ , he can feel Stefan’s eyes tracking him fiercely around the room.

“I’m going to untie you now,” he murmurs. Keeps his voice deliberately monotone. “What happens after that? That is entirely up to you…”

The sound of Stefan’s jagged breathing contrasts sharply with the complete lack of _anything_ Damon is contributing to their current stale-mate. His utter silence; infinitely more disturbing than the raw _menace_ radiating from his brother.

“I’m not leaving, but…” Alaric trails off, lets the one thousand unspoken words that sit between them remain exactly that, _unspoken._ Reaches down behind Stefan and slowly unshackles the chains that bind his wrists together.

He’s gone before Alaric can blink. The space before him nothing more than scuff marks and smudged blood. Reflexively, he flicks his eyes over to where the blood bag still sits, abandoned. Instead, Stefan has rolled Damon onto his back, is hovering his hands over the blood still leaking sluggishly from the wounds punched into his abdomen, his best impression of a panicked relative unable to think straight.

He moves again then, is doing everything at a blur Alaric finds impossible to track. He looks to the blood-bag. It’s gone. And so is Stefan. But as he drags his gaze back to Damon he can see that the tubing has been teeth-torn open and sloppy rivulets of crimson are streaking tracks down his slack chin. Stefan is murmuring insistently. Urging his brother to _drink it, drink it, drink it…_

 _Please, Damon…_

But the air remains thick with imminent horror and Stefan screams then. A blood-curdling echo that bounces around; trapped as it is inside the four stone walls of the cell.

 

 

 _He throws his arm along the solid length of his brother’s shoulders. Leans his head back and laughs up at the star-painted sky. There’s a football nestled in the long grass a good half-kick from where they’ve staggered; declared the result of their impromptu match to be a tie. Damon leaves tomorrow. To fight a war he knows he’ll never believe in…_

 _Memorises the curve of his brother’s back in case… Well, just in case…_

 

 

Damon won’t, _can’t_ , drink the blood. And it doesn’t take much for Stefan to realise that no amount of force-feeding him is going to change that. Alaric is between him and the stairs, _him and escape_ , but that’s never going to be a fair fight. Residual vervain in his bloodstream or not.

Decision made, he pulls the blood-bag away from Damon’s lips and raises it to his own. Swallows thickly around the rocks that have built up in the back of his throat and doesn’t bother to counter the ragged roar of disbelief that bellows across the open space as Alaric’s protest fills the room.

Gives the blood until the count of three to do what it needs to before retrieving his brother’s dead weight and lurching up the stairs. Desiccation is not a death sentence. Not for a vampire. But it’s no walk in the park either. And waking up, well, they say the agonising blood-shed that comes first is the easy part…

Stefan drops him once. Loses his footing on the uneven ground as his own injuries make themselves well and truly known.

He thinks he might vomit.

There are lights on in the boarding house, and a fire blazing despite the time of year. He’s suddenly grateful for the extra warmth. Tumbles his brother roughly onto the antique rug and barks an order in Rebekah's direction.

"Blood bags. Lots of them. Warm them up first..."

She mutters something back in her stilted brogue, unhappy. But she’s back beside him before he’s managed to remove the shredded shirt from Damon’s crushed rib-cage and he slows his fingers for a split second. Grants her a half-nod of appreciation.

“What on Earth happened to him?”

If she’s expecting an answer, Stefan doesn’t think to provide it.

He rips the tubing from the base of the first blood bag and catches a thin stream of the cocoa-warm liquid, has to pause for a beat. Damon stirs; a reflex reaction to the overwhelming scent of blood. Unconscious or not, a vampire's body knows what it needs. The movement shifts Stefan back into action and he squeezes the liquid out into the shallow tumbler sitting, discarded, on the floor at the foot of the nearest sofa. Dips three fingers into the liquid before pushing them, coated red, glove-like, between Damon's teeth.

It reminds him of New York, 1957. This is not the closest Damon has been to extinction.

And Stefan is not naive enough to believe it will never happen again.

The wounds in his gut continue to leak, steadfastly refusing to close.

He looks up then. Notes that Alaric has followed them home. Is standing, a shadowy silhouette in the entrance to the room. There’s an expression on his face that Stefan can’t quite place.

An incongruous mix of shock and relief and something else, something raw.

Something rare.

But Damon’s lips close around his fingers then. Hot and heavy as he finally gets the message. His eyes are still closed and the motion is nothing more than instinct, but it’s motion nonetheless. Stefan dips his fingers again, both hands. Can’t quite manage to keep up as his shoulders shake violently.

The result of his own heady mix of adjectives he’ll never bring himself to name…


End file.
